If at first you don't succeed*

A great and late night out and a puppy that has no comprehension of the BST/GMT switch do not make a good combination and it is fair to say that I felt dreadful as I wandered down stairs to let Whiffler out for a pee. This was at six o'clock. I was desperately short of sleep and had a minor hang over. The consequence of this was that the first three hours of the day were spent on the sofa and even strong black coffee was ineffective at raising energy levels.

Food actually did the trick and once I had got  myself on the outside of a couple of cinnamon bagels I felt able to do more than just press buttons on the remote control.

As is likely to be a recurring theme for the week, I wandered out to the garage and pondered the filthy engine and gearbox. After some gentle rubbing of the fins on the cylinder head I could see that it had the potential to clean up nicely but I rapidly came to the conclusion that the lump needed to be taken outside and degreased properly. This would need TP's assistance and would not happen today as he was out at work.

It doesn't look too bad from a distance

If you think this is grotty you should see the front sprocket

As an alternative I decided to attempt to separate the fork ends from the main tubes. The alloy fork ends are badly corroded and need stripping and polishing, but first I need to separate them from the fork assembly … it is fair to say that I got absolutely nowhere and headed back in to the house to consult manuals and the internet.

Lunch sated my hunger and the web had provided suggestions on deconstructing my front suspension so I headed back out the the garage … Once again I got nowhere and was reluctant to use brute force on the forks so decided to vent my frustration on the neck tube bearing races. These little sods need to be removed prior to powder coating and had thwarted me yesterday. Today I made a slight tooling change and tried again. A few clouts with a hammer on the end of a drift and the little devils clanged on to the garage floor.

My frustration was somewhat dissipated by this success and I left my lair, cleaned myself up and took T&M for a walk.

That just about cover's the days activities. The combination of hang-over, too little sleep and exercise meant that I was snoring on the sofa by half past nine and was snoring in bed shortly after ten.

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* do something else instead